United States or Gabon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The joke of the matter is that those forty-odd saddle-animals have been over that trail so many times that one would have difficulty in heading them off from it once they got started. Very much the same criticism would hold as to the popular notion of the Yosemite stage-drivers. They drive well, and seem efficient men.
A bite or a kick sent them back to their own positions when the true leaders grew tired of their vacation. However rigid this order of precedence, the saddle-animals were acknowledged as privileged; and knew it. They could go where they pleased. Furthermore theirs was the duty of correcting infractions of the trail discipline, such as grazing on the march, or attempting unauthorized short cuts.
Wishful won the two dollars. Bartley escaped to the veranda and his reflections. Presently he rose and strolled round to the corral. Wishful's three saddle-animals were lazying in the heat. Bartley was not unfamiliar with the good points of a horse. He rejected the sorrel with the Roman nose, as stubborn and foolish. The flea-bitten gray was all horse, but he had a white-rimmed eye.
Any one could drive Price's horses." The doctor smiled. "The young man confided to me that their names were 'Boyar' and 'Apache, I believe. They both lived up to the last one's name." "Well, I'll be Here, have a fresh cigar! I want to smoke on that. Hu-m-m! Did that young pirate drive those saddle-animals drive 'em from the station to this rancho Whew! I congratulate you, Doctor.
The old man I have mentioned, the one with long, sunburnt hair and buckskin shirt and who seemed a sort of aide or lieutenant to father, rode close to our wagon and indicated the jaded saddle-animals with a cock of his head. "Not sparin' horseflesh, Captain," he muttered in a low voice. "An' what in the name of Sam Hill are they hard-riding for if it ain't for us?"
In addition to the teams they had six saddle-animals all of them shaggy, unkempt mustangs. Three or four dogs, setters and half-bred greyhounds, trotted along behind the wagons. Each man took his turn for two days as teamster and cook; and there were always two with the wagons, or camp, as the case might be, while the other six were off hunting, usually in couples.
Boyar and Apache took advantage of every turn, pitch, steep descent, and ford to display the demoniacal ingenuity inspired by their outraged feelings. They were splendid, obedient saddle-animals. But to be buckled and strapped in irritating harness, and hitched to that four-wheeled disgrace, a buckboard!...
Then, at midday, hawksters and peasants disappear, the sun shines hotter, and the afternoon is tiresome and enervating. Castro Duro is situated on a hill of red earth. One goes up to the town by a dusty highway, with the remains of little trees which one Europeanizing mayor planted, and which all died; or else by zigzag paths, up which saddle-animals and beasts of burden usually go.
"Think a heap of her, do you, son?" he said, when the ambling saddle-animals had covered another half-mile of the homeward journey. "So much that it went near to spoiling me when she finally made me realize that I couldn't hold my own against the 'career," was the young man's answer.
Slapjack left the others here and rode southward down the Dry Creek Trail towards town, while the partners shifted part of the weight from the overloaded pack- mules to the remaining saddle-animals and continued eastward along the barren comb of hills on foot, leading the five horses. "It don't seem like we'll get away this easy," said Dextry, scanning the back trail.
Word Of The Day